Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide

No special technical skills or previous Moodle experience is needed to use the e-learning platform to create fun interactive teaching aids for young children. This step-by step guide makes it as easy as ABC.

Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide

Beginner's Guide

Nicholas FreearOctober 2011

No special technical skills or previous Moodle experience is needed to use the e-learning platform to create fun interactive teaching aids for young children. This step-by step guide makes it as easy as ABC.

Book Details

ISBN 139781849513289

Paperback332 pages

Book Description

Moodle is a virtual learning environment that is being used in more and more schools worldwide. It is ideal for teaching a younger age group as interactive lessons enable children to learn quicker and with greater ease.

Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide will help you to adapt your existing lesson plans to online Moodle courses and will give you ideas to create new activities, quizzes, and puzzles to make the learning process fun and interactive for young children.

The interactivity of Moodle means that it is perfect for teaching younger children as they can learn by watching, listening, and doing. Learn how to create activities and quizzes that are specially adapted for younger children and are quick and easy for you to incorporate in Moodle. Other highlights include spot-the-difference exercises, games, and embedded puzzles.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Introducing Moodle

Time for action – logging in for the first time

Creating your first Moodle course

Time for action – creating a course

Creating a quiz

Time for action – creating a quiz activity

Inserting an image

Time for action – inserting an image

Installing a text filter

Time for action – installing the SimpleSpeak filter

Using the filter

Time for action – using the SimpleSpeak filter

Summary

Chapter 2: Basic Math in Moodle

Searching for open content

Time for action – searching for open content

Creating a label

Time for action – creating a label resource

Embedding a video

Time for action – embedding video

Creating numerical questions

Time for action – creating numerical questions

Creating more math questions

Time for action – creating more maths questions

A calculated question

Time for action – creating a calculated question

Installing the Calculated Objects question type

Time for action – installing a question type

Creating your first calculated objects question

Time for action – creating a calculated objects question

Summary

Chapter 3: Telling Stories

Creating a database activity

Time for action – creating a database

Planning our database fields

Time for action – creating fields

Editing templates

Time for action – editing templates

Adding an entry

Time for action – adding an entry

Commenting on the database entry

Time for action – adding a story as a comment

Installing a sound recorder

Time for action – installing Audacity and LAME

Testing audio

Time for action – performing a test recording

Recording audio

Time for action – recording audio

Integrating an audio file with Moodle

Time for action – enabling the multimedia filter

Uploading audio files

Tim﻿e for action uploading files

Embedding our audio file

Time for action – embedding audio

Running your lesson

Summary

Chapter 4: Spot the Difference

Introducing the lesson module

Creating our first lesson activity

Time for action – adding a lesson activity

Finding spot-the-difference images

Time for action – finding images online on OCAL

Installing an image editor

Time for action – installing Inkscape

Editing the images

Time for action – editing the first SVG image

Bringing it together

Time for action – adding images to our lesson

More difficult exercises

Time for action – adding more questions

Wrapping up the lesson

Time for action – adding a branch

Enrolling students

Time for action – creating and using an enrolment key

Time for action – uploading users

Summary

Chapter 5: Setting Homework

Introducing the SIMILE timeline widget

Installing a text editor

Time for action – installing Notepad2

Creating the timeline data file

Time for action – creating the XML

Installing the Timeline Widget filter

Time for action – installing the filter

Creating a follow-on activity

Time for action – adding a forum

Adding information to our XML file

Time for action – editing the XML

Embedding the timeline

Time for action – putting a timeline together

Integrating the timeline with teaching

Time for action – creating an assignment

Summary

Chapter 6: Fun Games

Introducing Games

Creating a glossary

Time for action – creating a glossary

Adding glossary entries

Time for action – adding glossary entries

Glossary auto-linking

Time for action – using auto-linking

Installing the Games module

Time for action – installing the module

Creating a game

Time for action – adding snakes and ladders

Adding a cryptex

Time for action – adding a word search puzzle

Hidden picture

Time for action – adding a hidden picture

Hidden picture questions

Time for action – adding questions

Creating the puzzle

Time for action – adding a hidden picture game

Summary

Chapter 7: Interactive Puzzles

An alternative word search

Time for action – planning the word search

Creating the word search XML

Time for action – creating the XML

Chapter 8: Stories Revisited

Finding a book

Time for action – finding a book

Installing the Book module

Time for action – installing the activity module

Creating a book

Time for action – creating a book

Improving our book

Time for action – adding custom styles

Adding pictures

Time for action – adding pictures to our book

Completing our online book

Time for action – adding the remaining parts to the book

Installing a dictionary

Time for action – installing a pop-up dictionary

Integrating a dictionary service

Time for action – using the dictionary

Summary

Chapter 9: Embedding the Web

What is Scratch?

Embedding Scratch projects

Time for action – embedding Scratch applets

The Scratch embed filter

Time for action – installing and using the filter

RSS feeds and blocks

Time for action – adding an RSS feed

Improving our RSS feed

Time for action – using Yahoo! Pipes

Science simulations

Time for action – incorporating PhET simulations

HTML5 jigsaw

Time for action – exploring the jigsaw

Creating your own jigsaw activity

Time for action – using an iframe

Summary

Chapter 10: Administration

Course backup

Time for action – creating a course backup

Restoring a course

Time for action – course restore

Recording and tracking progress

Time for action – making notes

Blogging

Time for action – writing a blog post

Gradebook

Time for action – viewing grades

Community

Contributed plugins

Summary

What You Will Learn

Create a course and find your way around Moodle

Use the Moodle Database module to create story-telling activities

Create visual spot-the-difference exercises using the lesson module

Embed visualizations of historic and time-based events, using the SIMILE Timeline widget

Add fun games including word-search and hidden picture puzzles to your courses

Explore how to embed Flash-based puzzles to Moodle

Combine face-to-face teaching with online activities in a classroom environment

Authors

Nicholas Freear

Nicholas Freear got into software and educational technology through a series of happy accidents. During research for a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Birmingham he was thrown in at the deep end, learning to program in C++, using the Windows API, and programming against the interface card for an early digital camera (a "frame grabber", since you ask).
Bizarrely, this didn't put him off. In his next job, he was a programmer at a high-tech startup company helping to create products from voice recognition and speech synthesis software.
However, the World Wide Web was calling. After a character-building stint as a self-employed developer and accessibility consultant, Nicholas joined the team that was working on The Open University's next generation e-learning environment. And so, he was introduced to Moodle and the open-source software community. Following several fruitful years, Nick joined the Institute of Educational Technology at The OU, where he got to talk to more academics, pursue his accessibility and usability interests, and work on many different education and research projects.
He blogs (http://freear.org.uk), contributes to the Moodle community (http://moodle.org/user/view.php?id=93815), and likes to talk at workshops and conferences despite his stammer.
When he's not trying to understand the mysteries of the Web, Nick likes to sing, cycle, listen to loud music, and learn about all things Chinese. Occasionally all at the same time.

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